15 Questions With Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer

Fresh off of nabbing his eighth Golden Globe nomination for playing Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (2008), Tom Cruise sat down to promote Valkyrie(2008) alongside director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, 1994; X-Men, 2000). The film is about Nazis in World War II, but not those evil Nazis that Steven Spielberg loves to portray. Cruise’s Nazis don’t like the party and want to dump the punchbowl by assassinating Hitler. Unfortunately, the film has already garnered more bad press and speculation than most films do by their DVD release, which Bryan Singer and Tom Cruise touched on during the discussion, emphasizing the point that this is a “suspense thriller,” not a boring Holocaust film.

1- What made you want to do this film?

Tom Cruise: When I read the script I just thought how incredibly suspenseful it was; really, a great thriller.

I’ve always wanted to work with Bryan [Singer] since I saw his film Usual Suspects. We met at the premiere of Mission: Impossible and I told him then: “I want to work with you.” When I put [the script] down, I thought this can’t be true. Then I sat down with Bryan and found out that it is completely true. I’d never heard it before. There were certain things I thought had to be movie conventions, like Stauffenberg visiting Hitler the day after D-Day. It’s interesting and it actually happened. Actual dialogue in the film was taken out of letters and journals that [the film writers] had studied.

2- Do you think this is an important movie to come out among all the Holocaust films, so people can judge a country based on the whole and not individual events?

Cruise: That’s definitely important because I didn’t know the story. It’s important to know that it wasn’t everybody who believed that Nazi ideology. I grew up wanting to kill Nazis, wanting to kill Hitler, and I’d think: “Why didn’t someone just shoot him.” This was a massive, comprehensive story. We could have made it a five-hour, even a 10-hour miniseries. Bryan, though, was always very specific that this was a suspense thriller about trying to kill Hitler.

Bryan Singer: It’s not a Holocaust film. The movies and subject matter that’s happening to come out around this time is a coincidence, but this is far from a Holocaust movie. This is a conspiracy thriller about killing Hitler. As Tom was saying, it happens to be a bonus that this is true. It’s incredibly gripping and you may think they’re Hollywood conventions, some of the twists and turns, but it actually did happen.

3- What’s your definition of success?

Singer: Freedom. To be able to do the work you want to do. Sometimes it comes with money, financial freedom. Sometimes it comes with trust of people in your creative community. Either of those will give you creative freedom. As a director, if you’re able to do the work you want to do, then you’re successful — really successful — and that’s a blessing.

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